To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee. (NY: HarperCollins, 1960 [1999 reprint]), 323 pages.I recently read To Kill A Mockingbird. Without hesitation I can say that it is one of the ten or so best works of fiction I have ever read. There isn’t really any need to review it. It has withstood the test of time and everyone knows it is a GREAT BOOK. So, I thought I would share a few of my favorite quotes and passages from it, instead.

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…but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.
~ The character Scout Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. (NY: HarperCollins, 1960 [1999 reprint]), page 36.

“You are too young to understand it,” she said, “but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of –oh, of your father.”
~ The character Miss Maudie Atkinson, in To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. (NY: HarperCollins, 1960 [1999 reprint]), page 50.

“Were you playing cards?”
Jem fielded Dill’s fly with his eyes shut: “No sir, just with matches.”
I admired my brother. Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal.
~ The character Scout Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. (NY: HarperCollins, 1960 [1999 reprint]), page 61.

For reasons unfathomable to the most experienced prophets in Maycomb County, autumn turned to winter that year. We had two weeks of the coldest weather since 1885, Atticus said. Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves.
~ The character Scout Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. (NY: HarperCollins, 1960 [1999 reprint]), page 72.

“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” said Atticus, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
~ The character Atticus, in To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. (NY: HarperCollins, 1960 [1999 reprint]), page 120.

I wanted you to see something about her–I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
~ The character Atticus, in To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. (NY: HarperCollins, 1960 [1999 reprint]), page 128.

To all parties present and participating in the life of the county, Aunt Alexandra was one of the last of her kind: she had river-boat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was born in the objective case; she was an incurable gossip. When Aunt Alexandra went to school, self-doubt could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning. She was never bored, and given the slightest chance she would exercise her royal prerogative: she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn.
~ The character Scout Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. (NY: HarperCollins, 1960 [1999 reprint]), page 147.

Atticus was proceeding amiably, as if he were involved in a title dispute. With his infinite capacity for calming turbulent seas, he could make a rape case as dry as a sermon.
~ The character Scout Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. (NY: HarperCollins, 1960 [1999 reprint]), page 194.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
~ the character Atticus

As you grow older you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it— whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, of how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.
~ the character Atticus

It’s not okay to hate anybody.
~ the character Atticus

Jem see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that household full of children out there.
~ the character Atticus

What are the book, music, and video leanings of the readers of KevinStilley.com? I love to check out the items that people actually purchased at Amazon after clicking through from a hyperlink at KevinStilley.com. Below are the purchases that were made by my readers over the last four months.

The following is a list of some of my favorite books. I do not mean to suggest that these are the best books within the specified genres, only that they are some of the books that I have enjoyed the most.
FICTION / LITERATURE

The Penguin Classic Baby Name Book is probably my favorite baby name book. Not that we would actually use many of the names that are found in it, but it is fun to peruse and think about the works of classic literature from which the names were culled.

For instance, I can’t see myself naming Child #5 Caspar. When I think Caspar I think “friendly ghost.” Not exactly the first impression I want Child #5 to make. There just aren’t that many people who are going to think, “Caspar, yes, he was the stalwart American courtier of Isabel Archer in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady.” I’m afraid that Child #5 would never forgive Susan and me if he was stuck with the nickname Boo.

Or, Giocondo. Doesn’t that sound more like a description of Florida real estate than a baby’s name? [Read more…]

I enjoy reading books that have been recommended by people I know. Sometimes I like them, sometimes I don’t. However, I almost always benefit from reading them if for no other reason than I come to know a little better the person who suggested the book.

When someone tells me that a book was meaningful to them, that they enjoyed it, or that it changed them, and I follow-up by reading that book myself, I have connected with that person on a much different level than if I had coffee with them or sat in Sunday School with them.

Thus, when I noticed on Barry Creamer’s blog profile that Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold is one of his favorite books, it immediately went to the top of my to-be-read “on deck” stack. I have had the book in my library for years, but it never seemed to work its way to the top of the stack.

Although we rarely seem to make contact, I consider Barry to be one of my most precious friends. I think he is the best preacher of our generation, I admire his commitment to family and church, I am challenged by his understanding of the history of ideas, and,… well, you get the idea. He is an amazing fellow and I looked forward to engaging a book that is one of his favorites.

Thus, I came to the book with pretty high expectations. During the first 100 pages the book fell a little short of those expectations and I found myself wondering just why Barry thought so highly of it. It was interesting, even intriguing, but it was not spectacular. However, I could hardly put the book down during the final two-thirds of the book. I would not go as far as did the New York Herald Tribune when it proclaimed the book, “The most significant and triumphant work that Lewis has yet produced” but I certainly understand why they would think so. It is a great book and without reservation I give it an enthusiastic recommendation.

In Till We Have Faces Lewis reworks the myth of the Psyche and Cupid. It is a compelling story of Love, and Love’simitators (desire, dependency, etc). Lewis’ adaptation is complete with vibrant characters, an absorbing plot, and many layers of meaning for those who can’t resist the temptation to explore and deconstruct them.

I expect this book to be on my list of favorite books read in 2007. And, I am planning to re-read it soon so it may very well appear on my list of favorite books read in 2008. Lewis once said that if a book was not worth reading multiple times, that it was not worth reading even once. This book has joined the Kevin Canon of books that I periodically re-read.

I hope that you will choose to read it also, and then drop back by to let me know what you think of it.

It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book, as a woman is with child.~ page 247.

The one sin the gods never forgive us is that of being born women.~ page 233.

Yet it surprised me that he should have said it; for I did not yet know that, if you are ugly enough, all men (unless they hate you deeply) soon give up thinking of you as a woman at all.~ page 131.

But if the lords were glum, the common people in the streets were huzzaing and throwing caps in the air. It would have puffed me up if I had not looked in their faces. There I could read their mind easily enough. Neither I nor Glome was in their thoughts. Any fight was a free show for them; and a fight of a woman with a man better still because an oddity–as those who can’t tell one tune from another will crowd to hear the harp if a man plays it with his toes.~ page 217.

“We’ve had scores of matches together. The gods never made anyone–man or woman–with a better natural gift for it. Oh, Lady, Lady, it’s a thousand pities they didn’t make you a man.” (He spoke it as kindly and heartily as could be; as if a man dashed a gallon of cold water in your broth and never doubted you’d like it all the better.)~ page 197.

I had known Redival’s tears ever since I could remember. They were not wholly feigned, nor much dearer than ditchwater…. It’s likely enough she meant less mischief than she had done (she never knew how much she meant) and was now, in her fashion, sorry; but a new brooch, much more a new lover, would have had her drying her eyes and laughing in no time.~ page 63